The change from centralized, batch operations of data processing systems to distributed, interactive usage has resulted in more users being directly involved with these systems. When a data processing system is used in a country with multiple national languages or is accessed by user terminals located in different countries with different national languages, the system must accept commands and respond in the national language or languages of the users. In the past, support for national languages has been accomplished by placing all messages in a selected national language, or on a user by user basis such that each user will see messages of one national language. The first approach fails to offer a solution for users in a country, such as Canada, where there are more than one national language. Both approaches handle output only, are typically limited to messages, and have the following problems:
1. Language-dependent text other than messages exist in most computers in the form of language dependent (a) command verbs entered as input, such as "Delete", which must be recognizable by a program without need for separate programs to handle each national language, (b) keywords entered as input in commands or as screen panel fields, such as "source", (c) online documentation, or (d) prompts and help information.
2. They do not allow appropriate responses from service functions in a connected computer that has no knowledge of the requestor's language preference. For example, a user may invoke service A on computer 1. Service A may request assistance from Service B on computer 2, and service B may need to send messages to the user even though the usage is indirect.
3. They do not allow use of a new function that is supported in a language that could be understood by the user if the preferred language is not yet available.
Even where the national language problem is solved, the fact that computer users are becoming more heterogeneous as the usage of computers spreads raises other problems. For example, not only may the national language preference of users in a distributed data processing system differ, but the level of experience or knowledge of the users may vary widely. In many cases, different classes of users need to use the same computer services, and this requires messages to be customized for each class of user. For example, a programmer could understand the message, "Node XYZ does not respond, reinitialization will take 10 minutes." and could arrange other work until it became available. However, mail room data entry personel whose work depends on node XYZ might more easily understand, "Take a 10 minute coffee break and then try again." Some messages could, of course, be understood by all classes of users. Therefore, not only are translations of all messages needed for users in different national languages, but some messages must be customized for different classes of users.
In my earlier application Ser. No. 480,418, I describe a data processing system which facilitates concurrent multilingual use which uses national language indexes together with specialized services to provide complete support in the national language preferred by the user. By "complete", I mean that the user will not sense output (e.g. see, hear, or feel in the case of braille) any other language unless it is one the user has specified as an acceptable alternative, and all input by the user (e.g. typed or spoken) is in the preferred national language. The national language indexes are selected either when the user is enrolled, or from the "Sign On" entry screen if users are not enrolled. More than one national language index is given per user, a primary index which identifies the language most preferred by a user, and one or more secondary indexes that identify languages that the user can understand even though they are not the preferred language. Use of these indexes allow all programs, including application, application control, and supervisor programs, to be independent of the user's chosen national language.
The national language indexes are used for a data collection that contains message models. Message models are stored via a message identifier primary key that is common for all usage and a secondary key that is the national language index. A central message service composes messages from message models by substituting language independent variable values before the message is shown to the user. More particularly, the message service receives requests for message text from application, application control, and supervisor programs. The requesting program supplies the message identifier, and the message service uses that as the primary key for retrieval from one or more data collections containing message models. The message service uses as a secondary key the national language index which is set when the user signs on to the computer. The message model data collections may be organized in any manner that allows use of primary and secondary keys. All such collections have a secondary key to identify the national language of the message model. In addition to the language index that is set when the user signs on, other values are set to identify an order of search among data collections according to the classification of the current user. The message service searches different data collections until it finds the first occurrence of the requested message model in the national language needed for a particular user. This classification index could be used as a tertiary index within a single data collection in an alternative implementation. That message model is composed and sent to application control. A message coordinator program in application control checks the message identifier and the type of output device to determine what action is necessary.
Separate data collections for each language contain other types of text that are more specialized or of greater volume than messages. These data collections contain the national language index as a standard part of their identifying name. The collections are made available for each user so the order of search for named elements will find the material in the primary (preferred) or secondary (usable) national language. Examples of use include on-line documentation, HELP texts, static text on display panels, and sample data for application programs or application usage environments. The idiosyncrasies and differences between languages create problems that sometimes are best solved by language-dependent versions of programs. Such cases are likely to occur when the program must be adjusted because of differences in length or format for the same information in different languages. The advantages of such data collections being available for all programs are that all input required of a user and all text responses to the user can be in the national language of the user and, therefore, concurrent, multi-lingual use of the system is possible. For example, a French speaking user and an English speaking user can use the same programs on the same system concurrently without encountering any text in the other user's language.